book signings – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

Mary mary-ann-esposito Ann Esposito and I go way back. Okay, sort of.

I met her in real life at a Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School event in 2008. (Also, once I saw her at the Market Basket, but I didn’t actually talk to her. Does that count?)

I really met her for the first time in my younger years, watching her on TV. She hosted Ciao Italia on PBS. Years later, I watched all the reruns, too.

She is a skilled, wonderful cook, as anyone who has ever watched Ciao Italia knows. She was as warm and funny and caring in person as she was on TV.

I’m Italian, as anyone who knows me knows. I learned so much not only about cooking, but about life and how to live it from my Italian nana, Mary. Meeting Mary Ann, watching her cook in the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School’s cucina, gave me back that feeling of being with my grandmother in her kitchen again for a few hours.
Being with your people: Priceless.

Anyway, Mary Ann Esposito is also an author. The Stonewall event was a cooking class and a book signing. She was kind enough to sign my book, and gracious enough to pose for a photo with me. Here’s how much it meant to me: I was able to put my hand on this photo of us from 2008 literally in seconds. I knew exactly where it was.

I am beyond excited to tell you that she will be at the New England Authors Expo March 31st event: 2017 Authors Night by the Sea, in Portsmouth, NH, signing her books. I will be there, too, signing my novel, One Brave Thing.

And visiting with Mary Ann. Maybe I’ll even get another photo with her.

Life’s funny, isn’t it?

me-and-mary-ann-on-the-authors-list

Click here for the information, if you want to come!

Tess Gerritsen came to speak at Kennebooks last week. If you aren’t familiar with her work, you are missing out. She is a local author, from Cape Elizabeth. She currently writes predominantly murder mysteries, often with a medical theme (hey, she is a doctor, after all!). She started out her career by writing romances…she certainly has range. 🙂

Rather than reading from her newest novel Ice Cold, she decided to talk about how she writes, as well as answer audience questions.

She hears about a story, either from present news or from history, and if she is still thinking of it a couple of weeks later, then “I know what my next book is about!”. One idea that fascinated her and later became a book was this: What must it be like to wake up in a body bag? After hearing about an instance of this actually happening, Ms. Gerritsen did some research and discovered a facility in which this was a common occurrence…and a book was born.

Ms. Gerritsen also had advice for other writers on getting their first book published.

First: write your book (or in my case, finish writing it)! She writes her first draft longhand, the second draft is typed…then she will do 4-5 (or even up to 8) drafts total before it’s ready for submission.
Make sure your book is the best that it can be and is in perfect condition before you submit the manuscript.
Get a literary agent. She believes it is very important in today’s market to have a literary agent to represent you and to sell your book.

One thing she mentioned is that she doesn’t let anyone read her manuscript before sending it to her publisher (including her husband!). Other writers, for example, Stephen King, say that they count on their spouses to be their first readers and sometimes will incorporate their suggestions into their writing.

She also talked about how she develops her characters, and how she often doesn’t know how the book is going to turn out, so she doesn’t ever edit her first draft. Writing it longhand helps her to resist this urge to edit (legal pads are not conducive to cutting and pasting!). In one book that she wrote, the main character was a man until midway through the book, when she realized that it wasn’t working and changed him into a woman, which solved all of the problems she had been having with it.

🙂

Bottom line: finish writing your book!!!